WPKN’s Black History Month Film Series: HOMECOMING, A FILM BY BEYONCE

A documentary chronicling Beyoncé’s monumental performance at the 2018 Coachella music festival, quotes from distinguished black creatives and intellectuals appear at various points between footage of the concert and its tireless gestation including WEB DuBois, Nina Simone, Toni Morrison and Reginald Lewis, suggesting not only Beyoncé’s reverence for her forerunners but her own by-now-unequivocal stature in the pantheon of black American greatness. Beyoncé, joined on stage by more than 200 performers, turns that soundbite into triumphant roar, crafting an experience whose emphasis on the whole – the masterfully synchronized and color-coordinated corps of dancers, back-up singers, majorettes, trumpet players, et al – gives it the feeling of visual, aural communion. Beyoncé is the priestess, the ringleader, insistent on her authorship of this one-of-a-kind spectacle, which marked the first time a black woman had ever headlined Coachella.